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Ethics at a Glance
Rights and Rights-Based Ethics
As with many ethical perspectives, rights-based approaches also have their roots
with ancient philosophers concerned with the concept of justice, as well as
natural law philosophers who recognized a potential for certain rights inherent in
human nature. Natural rights are generally held to be a gift of nature or God
that cannot be taken away. Modern notions of natural rights are most closely
associated with the seventeenth century British philosopher John Locke (Almond,
1993) and his contention that human beings are entitled to life, liberty and
property. In contemporary theory, these and other moral claims have come to
be referred to as universal human rights and form the basis for establishing
and/or evaluating ethical standards within the social order.
Beauchamp and Childress (2001) define a right as a “justified claim that
individuals and groups can make upon other individuals or upon society; to have
a right is to be in a position to determine by one’s choices, what others should do
or need not do”. In the case of a legal right, the claim must be justified by legal
principles and rules. Likewise, a moral right must find grounding in moral
principles and rules. One form of rights does not necessarily lead to another,
although this distinction is not well recognized in contemporary society.
Beauchamp and Childress go on to point out that, while some rights may be
argued to be absolute, most are better considered as prima facie rights. In
other words, most rights should be observed in the absence of competing claims:
however, all rights are likely to be subject to compelling, competing claims at
some point. For example, the fundamental right to life is often deferred in
situations involving self-defense or killing during war.
Another useful distinction is that of positive and negative rights. A positive right
is “a right to receive a particular good or service from others” (Beauchamp &
Childress, 2001). Therefore, a positive right assumes that someone (individual
or agency) is obligated to do something for you. A negative right is “a right to
be free from some action by others”, so a negative right obligates others to
refrain from action. An important implication here is that a right places an
obligation on another individual or social entity, as well as consideration of
whether the associated duties are then interpreted to be absolute.
While the concept of rights is appealing as a basis for moral argument and
justification in modern democratic societies, it is also open to a number of
concerns (Almond, 1993). First, there is no general agreement on what or who
can be the subject of a right. A similar lack of agreement exists on what kinds of
things there can be a right to. Finally there are questions about whether rights
can ever be inalienable or absolute.
For more on rights and rights-based ethics see:
Catholic Encyclopedia. Right. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13055c.htm
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Human Rights.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/h/hum-rts.htm
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Human Rights.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights-human/